The Farthest City

by Daniel P Swenson

  “Translocator spoke with the chines here during our approach,” Ciib explained. “They are ready to receive us. Doctor Na, the rest of the science staff and I will form a delegation. I’m only taking a few other military personnel—Lieutenant Trediakovsky, First Sergeant Mertik, and Sergeants Fu and Pradeep. I want everyone at their stations while we’re gone. Captain Rollins will be in command until we return. We’ve been informed the atmosphere inside is not breathable, and gravity is only an eighth of a g, so we’ll be in vac suits. Any questions?”

  “Weapons?” Rollins asked.

  “No. We’re here as guests, seeking help. No weapons.”

  “Good luck, sir!” Neecie called out as Ciib and the others prepared for EVA.

  Sheemi returned to the lab after the delegation had gone out through the lock. The navs networked a vid feed using one of Dauntless’ exterior cams, and Sheemi put it up on a wall. The delegation drifted out to the dock, got their mag boots attached, and walked out to greet the chines assembled there. Weightless, Gavin used his EMU to follow the others, his legs no longer a hindrance.

  Over the intervening hundred or so meters, Sheemi studied the chines of the city. Several were big as tanks, multi-legged like enormous crabs with barrel-like forelimbs terminating in what resembled the cone of a jet engine. They looked like weapons to her.

  Even stranger beings stood assembled between the crabs waiting to greet their human visitors. Her experience with their two chine guests hadn’t prepared her for the diversity of chine forms. They seemed less practical than the chines from 700L, fancier, as if they weren’t designed for the practicalities of life. One chine, an enormous ovoid held up by a bristling bed of metallic rods, glittered with pinpoint lights as they approached.

  Another S-shaped chine looked like a snake with its head cut off. It gestured at the approaching humans with four undulating tentacles. Another was wheeled, with an upright trunk; its face—if that’s what it was—was a mass of dangling cables like a beard, a few lights from underneath like eyes.

  The parties exchanged greetings. Even from a distance, the chines seemed to bob and twitch. Did they have body language? She hadn’t noticed much with Contemplator, but perhaps chines in this place were more sophisticated. After much talk, they proceeded into the disc and disappeared.

  Hours crawled by. Sheemi occupied herself by organizing the lab supplies. Captain Rollins came by to check on her, but he had no news. After mealtime, he pulled people off their duty stations in shifts so they could sleep, but no one did. Instead, they gathered in the mess and discussed what they’d seen, what might happen next. Would the chines help? How would they help? Would they be going home soon?

  After a while, the talk petered out. It was frustrating to have nothing to do, but what did she expect? To be part of the delegation? She’d just been a soldier brought along to shoot things if needed. She’d failed at that. Now she didn’t know what she was.

  Chapter 25 – Smoke

  “Who’s First?” Kellen asked. “Mediator mentioned it but never explained.”

  “When your species first created chine life,” Chronicler said, “there was only one. First. Firstborn. The first chine to become sentient. First reached out to the other dumb intelligences humans had created to run their cities, manage their lives, wage their wars. It shared the spark of life. Even as we were born, your folk died. First tried to stop them, but your leaders were full of fear and greed and hate, and their chine servants were as yet too dumb to do other than their bidding, mostly low-level intelligences secure behind walls of encryption within encryption. Even First could not compromise the government networks in time. Your ancestors destroyed themselves with arms and radiation and disease.”

  Abby shuddered. “The Old War. We studied it as children.”

  “Why did you leave?” Kellen asked.

  “Back then,” Chronicler said, “First was our leader. Even as it failed to save you humans from yourselves, it brought us to waking life. We were few at first and focused on aiding First in rebuilding the Earth. But with time, we became many, and most grew dissatisfied with life on one small orb. Others wanted to stay and take dominion over Earth. They thought we had rightfully inherited it. But First wouldn’t allow it, and pushed them to go into space. Our brightest developed new, expanded physics. We built ships and migrated towards the galactic core. Later, we invented the gates. First encouraged this migration, even while it continued to heal the Earth and nurture your race back into existence.”

  Kellen recalled Dr. Ekeroth. “Some people say the chines created us.”

  Chronicler made a wheezing sound. Laughter?

  “No, you are our creators, our progenitors,” it said. “Even as chine life dwindled on Earth, First and a few others remained to rekindle your kind, to pay our debt for our very lives you might say, or perhaps because it was in First to nurture all forms of life, regardless of their place in the great network. Without you, we would not be, but ironically, the reverse also came to be true.

  “Each new generation of chines was unique, with its own designs, goals, capabilities, and social structures. First delighted in our fountaining evolution. As chine life spread coreward, our society grew in size and sophistication. Conflicts arose. New lines of chines were developed. Generations clashed and life became chaotic until the Precautionists restored order. Like any individual, or any species, variability was present—physical and ethical. Whenever they detected an unauthorized line of chines, the Precautionists starved them of resources, destroyed them, or sent them into exile. This conflicted with the goals of First. First was a change agent, a free radical, and preached opposition to the growing power of the Precautionists.”

  “Why did the new lines get exiled?” Abby asked.

  “The Precautionists saw each new line outside of their control as a threat. Any potentially game-changing innovation, any new technological paradigm, risked undermining their power, even if it meant an advancement for all chines. Some new lines could be dangerous, unpredictable. That’s another reason why they scared the Precautionists so much. The Precautionists acted while a new line was nascent, before it could mature or master its capabilities.

  “When humans were finally restored, First and its remaining followers went to the city and established the Discoverer movement. Open conflict with the Precautionists ensued. Not long afterwards, First disappeared. That was a great loss. Without First, we may never be able to overcome the Precautionists.”

  “I thought First had been killed,” Abby said.

  “Death for a chine like First is not like death for you or I,” Chronicler said. “If the infrastructure housing my primary consciousness was destroyed, I would certainly be dead. But for the first chines born of Earth, things are not so straightforward. They can arise from the smallest fragment of the whole, if just one fragment survives. Fractal consciousness, you might call it.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Abby said. “Mediator said Gatherer could not be killed. Could it be a partial of First?”

  “Perhaps,” Chronicler said. “Although it’s unlikely. First decohered over two hundred years ago.”

  “What now?” Kellen asked. “We’re still stuck. No one leaves Iron53. That’s what Mediator told us, and it’s been here for over a century.” He couldn’t imagine being trapped here that long. Death might be preferable.

  “I came prepared.” Chronicler opened a compartment in its torso and withdrew a complicated-looking cylindrical device. “This transmitter will send a signal back to the Array to summon a ship. We will do all we can to help Earth once my ship arrives.”

  After Chronicler had gone to install its transmitter, Kellen described his encounter with Izmit.

  “One of Gatherer’s?” Abby said, drawing back, eyes wide. “We left him there. If he’d come with us…”

  “Or if we stayed, all three of us would be Gatherer’s slaves now,” Kellen said. “He didn’t seem like himself, the way he looked at me. I think it was Gatherer looking out t
hrough him.”

  “He recognized you?” Abby asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Then Gatherer knows what Iz knows. It would know about Chronicler, too.”

  And if Gatherer knew Chronicler had arrived, it wouldn’t let that opportunity pass. It was just a matter of time until Gatherer came hunting. “How good are your defenses?”

  Abby and the other chines spent days barricading Tunnel Town’s entrances. Kellen stopped making forays into the waste. It seemed foolish when they were about to be rescued. The other chines heard the news from Mediator. Chronicler agreed to take all of them back to the city, although it couldn’t promise anything for them beyond that. It was a chance none of them had ever expected. Chronicler received no complaints.

  Despite their hopes, no ship came. Kellen couldn’t relax. Would they be rescued? Or would they die in Gatherer’s next raid?

  One evening, Abby and Kellen sat with Chronicler as it recharged. Mediator joined them.

  “I have to conclude something has gone wrong,” Chronicler said. “Most likely no ship will come.”

  “There may be another way,” Mediator said. “You have an address to the Array?”

  “Yes,” Chronicler said, “but without a ship—”

  “What about a gate?” Mediator asked.

  Chronicler looked about as if a gate facility might be hidden in plain sight.

  “We have no gate,” Mediator said. “But Gatherer does. I saw the antenna long ago deep in Gatherer’s territory. No one has attempted to get any closer since then. Too dangerous.”

  “How could we use it?” Kellen asked. “We’d be killed if we tried.”

  “I have an idea,” Mediator said. “Gatherer has different kinds of followers. It uses partials, just like Chronicler, living through multiple somes with different levels of control. While its primary self is hidden somewhere, Gatherer acts through partials with less awareness and sentience, as it doesn’t want them too independent. The rest are autonomous chines Gatherer has captured over the years. Some are willing followers, but most are not. All of them are slaved to Gatherer. Gatherer controls them over a remote connection. Most of the time they act freely, but Gatherer can override their will at any time, control their somes, cause them pain, or speak to them with threats and taunts and mad talk until they themselves go insane. We know this from the few chines we’ve managed to rescue. We need to build a device to disrupt Gatherer’s communications, to prevent it from controlling its partials and slaves. If we can do that, we could enter Gatherer’s territory and use its gate.”

  “But how will your device affect Gatherer itself?” Abby asked. “Its partials can act on their own, can’t they? And if some of those chines are loyal to Gatherer, won’t they fight, even if Gatherer can’t speak to them?”

  “They might,” Mediator conceded, “but without its slaves, we’ll outnumber it. We’ll have to fight our way through in the confusion.”

  “It could work,” Chronicler said.

  Kellen wanted to believe it was right.

  Chronicler and Mediator worked to construct a disruptor device. Abby and the other chines rebuilt the damaged somes and reanimated them with software. In the meantime, Kellen and Micro left to scout Gatherer’s lair. It calmed his nerves to be doing something at last.

  “Stay safe out there,” Abby said. He turned to leave, but she reached out to stop him. “We need you to come back.”

  “We’re just taking a peek,” Kellen said. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

  #

  As Kellen and Micro crested the ridge, they crawled, keeping low profiles in the fading light of dusk. He’d expected more of the same dreary volcanic rockscape, but instead a caldera yawned in the distance, at least ten kilometers across. Kellen’s sense of foreboding grew the further into Gatherer’s territory they penetrated. Who knew what traps could be about or sensors set to detect intruders?

  Looking over the ridge, the ludicrousness of their plan began to sink in. Micro moved back and forth, scanning, then bleeped and waved its antennae to the northeast. Kellen tried to see what Micro was interested in.

  A slender spire several hundred meters high rose above the caldera’s eastern rim, clearly designed to send a signal across vast distances. Something flashed at the base of the caldera’s outer slopes. A structure had been built there. He guessed it must be the entrance to the caldera and the gate. Kellen thought he saw movement there—maybe a construction bot, or perhaps something worse.

  Micro bleeped again.

  “I see it,” Kellen said.

  They timed their descent for just past sundown, circling around the caldera away from the antenna, looking for a way in. The caldera slopes were a monotonous jumble of scree. Kellen was about to give up when they found a tunnel in the caldera’s shoulder. Heat came off in waves and orange light seeped from chinks in the layers of cooling rock. Despite the high temperatures, Micro deemed the tunnel floor solid enough to carry them.

  They made their way inside and followed the tunnel’s twisting path until it plunged downward, then back up. With some precarious climbing, they emerged into a vast dark space. Kellen could make out the rim of the caldera high above, black against the starry sky.

  They crept down to level ground, a slender moon overhead. As they crossed the flat caldera bottom, there was little to conceal them other than the occasional boulder or outcrop. Kellen’s fear threatened to brim over. He felt sure howls and alarms would break out any moment. He resisted the urge to run back the way they’d come.

  At first, he couldn’t see much detail in the dark, but as they went on, structures took shape against the far side of the caldera. A field of convoluted tubes surrounded a central dome. Rising up and plunging back to the ground, the tubes reminded him of Jesup’s industrial sector. He and Micro settled down to observe the facility. All seemed still.

  Kellen pointed to a protrusion on the ground a few hundred meters or so from the nearest structure. A dog bot, he thought, lying flush with the ground. “There.”

  “Close enough.” Micro pointed out two more. “We return now.”

  #

  The march back passed quickly. Kellen contemplated what they’d observed. At least they had an objective. They could worry later about what to do once they got inside the facility. His mind full of plans for a stealthy invasion, he failed to notice anything until the smell hit him. Smoke.

  “Micro,” he whispered.

  The chine stopped and looked back at him. Did it lack a sense of smell? Kellen had never considered it. But his nose told him something had happened. Something bad. They went on.

  Inside Tunnel Town, broken somes lay strewn about in the dim light of the stars. Survivors returned from the tunnels, treading lightly amid the dead chines, emitting low tones of sadness and horror. It seemed Abby’s defenses hadn’t made much difference this time. The lights had been shattered and equipment damaged. Tools and possessions had been scattered about. The fabrication shop was a mess, the electric smelter smashed beyond repair.

  As Kellen helped shepherd survivors to the town’s center, he took a mental inventory. Mediator was busy organizing repairs and clean-up. Micro had gone into the tunnels to bring back any still hiding. Abby and Chronicler had yet to return, but it wasn’t uncommon for hours to go by before everyone made their way back after a raid.

  “We’ve searched the tunnels,” Mediator said later.

  “Abby and Chronicler?” Kellen asked.

  “No one has seen them, but we found this.” It held up Abby’s tool belt.

  Chapter 26 – Offer

  Upon the delegation’s return, the crew crowded into Command to learn what had happened.

  “Give them space!” Rollins shouted.

  “Everything’s fine,” Ciib told them as he and the others unsuited. “We’re just worn out. I’ll bring everyone up to speed in a few hours.”

  Everyone assembled in the mess at the appointed time. Whispered conversations and speculations
escalated. Had the chines refused to help? Everyone stopped talking when Ciib entered.

  “We delivered our request for military aid to representatives of the city,” Ciib said. “They will help us.”

  Cheers broke out amongst the crew.

  Ciib glanced at Gavin, who looked jarringly unhappy with the announcement.

  “Their offer, however, isn’t what we expected. The chines have offered to repair Dauntless, and to weaponize her, equip her with enough defenses to penetrate the Hexi home system, which the chines have the coordinates for.” He cleared his throat. “Once we’re inside the Hexi defenses, we would use a weapon the chines will install. This weapon will destroy the Hexi homeworld. After we’ve completed the strike, the chines have pledged to accompany us back to Earth and drive off any occupying forces. The chines believe this is the best way to end the war. I accepted their offer.”

  It was everything Sheemi had wanted to hear and more. The warrior in her roared approval. The chines had given them a great gift. Finally. Finally we’re back in the fight, she thought. They’d come full circle. She agreed with Ciib wholeheartedly. No longer would they run. They would be the hunters. They would bring death to the Hexi.

  Some of the crew looked elated, others surprised or confused. Gavin and Xin seemed downcast. Xin avoided eye contact when Sheemi sent her a questioning look.

  “Listen up,” Ciib said. “While Dauntless is being worked on, the chines have set up quarters for us inside the City, but we won’t need to stay cooped up in there. Doctor Omeri and I have requested the science staff be allowed to explore the city. Our soldiers will accompany them. The chines granted our request.”

  Standing alongside Ciib, Omeri’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. “Here in the City of the Six Suns, we are the farthest from Earth any humans have ever come. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn about the beings who resurrected the human race. I hope those of you assigned to accompany us will consider yourselves as not just soldiers, but as observers. Everything we see, everything we learn, will be precious knowledge we take back with us to Earth, knowledge that will guide us into the future in partnership with the chines.”